Athletic of Philadelphia (also known as the Philadelphia Athletics) was a prominent National Association, and later National League, professional baseball team that played in the second half of the 19th century.
The city of Philadelphia "had been a baseball town from the earliest days of the game", fielding amateur teams since at least the early 1830s. In 1860, James N. Kerns formed a club, simply named "Athletic Base Ball Club", that soon domina...
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Athletic of Philadelphia (also known as the Philadelphia Athletics) was a prominent National Association, and later National League, professional baseball team that played in the second half of the 19th century.
The city of Philadelphia "had been a baseball town from the earliest days of the game", fielding amateur teams since at least the early 1830s. In 1860, James N. Kerns formed a club, simply named "Athletic Base Ball Club", that soon dominated amateur play in the area (Jordan 1999). Harper's Weekly chronicled a match between Athletic and Atlantic of Brooklyn for the baseball championship in 1866. A famous Harper's illustration shows the Athletic players in uniforms with the familiar blackletter "A" on front.
When newspapers developed stand-alone game scores and league standings, the club was termed Athletic (Base Ball Club being dropped in any case). In prose the team was commonly called the Athletics, plural, and later generations have usually called both club and team the ...
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